


The Boy Who Touched Time

by LizBee



Category: Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: Gen, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-02
Updated: 2009-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizBee/pseuds/LizBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clyde's mum always said that if you died in a dream, you'd die in real life. He died and regenerated nine times in his dreams, but he kept waking up the next morning. Post "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy Who Touched Time

In Clyde's dream, he was dying. He could feel every cell in his dream-body decaying as the poison swept through it. Someone was kneeling beside him. He knew her. He knew her, but she was too young. And he was so old.

"A tear, Sarah Jane?" he asked, in a voice that wasn't his. She was trying to smile. "Now don't cry. Where there's life, there's..."

Clyde opened his eyes.

"Weird," he said.

*

He wasn't an idiot, of course, he knew what had happened. Get shocked by a load of artron energy, something's bound to happen.

It was just ...

The ghosts.

He really could have done without the ghosts.

*

Time ghosts.

Like, he'd be hanging around Luke's place, and his mum would walk past, but it wouldn't just be Sarah Jane now, he'd be seeing her as she was twenty-five years ago, and then he'd blink, and she'd be an old woman.

Or, he'd see Rani, but she'd be ten years older, with short hair and a sharp suit, all proper-journalist and all. Or it would be Luke, grown up, spouting off a stream of scientific gibberish. Only it wasn't quite gibberish, because on the edge of his mind, Clyde could understand it.

Time ghosts, he called them, but another part of his mind called them temporal shadows, and understood why they happened.

*

"Clyde? Clyde Langer!"

"Clyde," Luke nudged him. "You're up."

He was out of his chair and heading for the whiteboard before his brain caught up with his feet: forty minutes of drawing Autons in the margins of his maths book, and now they expected him to solve equations. At least he could probably get a laugh out of the others before Ms Hope gave him detention. He picked up the marker, then hesitated.

"For those of you playing along at home," said Ms Hope, "_a, b _and _c_ represent the three dimensions. Clyde, is there somewhere else you'd rather be?"

Well, yeah, but the Eye of Orion wasn't on any of the bus routes. Clyde pressed the marker to the whiteboard, then stopped.

"No," he said, "this doesn't work, Miss."

A muffled laugh ran around the room. They were waiting to see what he did next. Clyde glanced behind him at Luke, who was watching with a furrowed brow.

"You need _d_ and _e_, Miss," Clyde said. "You need five dimensions for this sort of thing."

"Clyde," Ms Hope pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "If you're so keen to rewrite the laws of mathematics, you can stay in with me in your lunch-break. Do the problem as it's written, or sit down and stop wasting our time."

"Was that a joke?" Luke whispered as he returned to his seat.

"No," said Clyde. "Not a joke." He picked up his pen and sketched the Seal of Rassilon while Ms Hope took them through quadratic equations.

*

**CLangers07:** something weird's happening  
**Clangers07: **to me i mean

**MariaUSA: **Something alien?

**CLangers07**: sort of  
**CLangers07**: i mean yes  
**CLangers07**: not necessarily bad. but i feel weird telling the others.

**MariaUSA**: Oh, so I'm safe, am I? :)

**CLangers07**: yeah

**MariaUSA**: Go on, then.   
**  
CLangers07**: i'm having memories that aren't mine  
**CLangers07**: and some of them haven't happened yet  
**  
MariaUSA**: Wow.  
**MariaUSA**: Whose memories are they?  
**  
CLangers07**: don't laugh  
**  
MariaUSA**: I promise. Dead serious, that's me.  
**  
CLangers07**: the Doctor.   
**CLangers07**: i absorbed some power from his ship. artron radiation. it powers the TARDIS but it comes from the Doctor himself. it's created by the Gallifreyan mind, it's the source of their temporal sensitivity  
**CLangers07**: and the fact that i knew all that should be proof i'm not messing you about  
**  
MariaUSA**: Are you becoming a Time Lord?  
**MariaUSA**: Clyde?  
**MariaUSA**: Clyde, are you still there?  
**  
CLangers07**: i don't know  
**  
MariaUSA**: Your punctuation's still rubbish. :)  
**  
CLangers07**: very funny  
**  
MariaUSA**: Are you OK?  
**  
CLangers07**: more or less. feel weird tellign the others.   
**CLangers07**: "hey sarah jane i have some of the memories of your alien ex. btw loved your hair in '76."  
**  
MariaUSA**: They should know, though.  
**MariaUSA**: I mean, they can help you!  
**  
CLangers07**: fix me you mean?  
**CLangers07**: thats the thing maria, i don't know if i want to be fixed

*

"How did you know," asked Sarah Jane, when they had finally stopped running, "that the Cybermen of Mondas were vulnerable to gold?"

Clyde shrugged. "K9 must've told me."

Sarah Jane gave him an odd look. Clyde pretended he didn't notice.

*

His mum always said that if you died in a dream, you'd die in real life. Which was just the sort of thing to scare a small Clyde Langer into hours of wakefulness, but he was older now, and he didn't believe in that sort of thing. He died nine times in his dreams, but he kept waking up the next morning.

The regeneration dreams weren't the worst. The awful ones were the very old ones, from before the Doctor had his TARDIS, before the TARDIS had her Doctor. He had a family, and they died. He had a name, and it was lost. He had a friend, and he went bad.

*

"Luke," he said, on a quiet afternoon in the attic, "have you ever considered going into world domination?"

Rani looked up from her magazine. "Don't become a guidance counsellor, Clyde," she said. "You're rubbish."

"I was just checking."

*

He had two friends, once. They both went bad.

Rani didn't have a fobwatch hidden away in her room. Not even a locket. Mr Chandra gave him hell, and he felt bad for going through Rani's stuff, but he also felt better for knowing.

*

Mr Chandra had a new secretary. She kept on typing as he entered, just said, "You must be Clyde. Mr Bellman told Mr Chandra to expect you. Take a seat." She glanced up, while her hands kept typing like they weren't even part of her body. _Shorthand, filing, hundred words per minute_.

He knew her. He'd never met her in his life, but he knew her.

"Thanks," he said, which was a rubbish way of saying _I'm sorry about what we did to you, you deserved better, you should have a brilliant life_, but it would have to do.

Anyway, he was beginning to understand.

*

It was a summer day, and Clyde was by himself. Luke and Sarah Jane were looking into a university scholarship that might or might not be offered by aliens. Rani was attending an open day for prospective journalism students. Both had invited Clyde along, but he'd refused. He had his own investigations to make, although what art school would be interested in a kid from the suburbs with a portfolio full of aliens remained to be seen. If he didn't tell anyone what he was planning, then no one would need to know when he was rejected. Anyway, there was always UNIT.

Only.

He felt it before he heard it, like the breath of a whisper on his cheek. Clyde turned around, seeking.

Yes. There.

He was running.

He was at the TARDIS doors even before it had fully materialised, hammering like mad on the wood.

"Come on," he was saying, "you've got to let me in, I've been waiting for you. Let me in!"

The door opened.

The Doctor was leaning against the console, hands in his pockets, a thoughtful look on his face.

"The artron energy," said Clyde. "It's still in me, isn't it?"

The Doctor nodded.

"It's a sort of metacrisis," Clyde continued, "only not quite, that's why my brain hasn't exploded."

"The TARDIS kept you safe from that," said the Doctor. "It's what she does. Protects us." He gave  the console a pat. "When she can."

"Can I come with you?"

There was a flicker of amusement in the Doctor's eyes. "Weren't you grounded by the Judoon?"

"You're not scared of a few space rhinos, are you?"

"What about the others?"

"We'll come back for them," said Clyde.

"What would Sarah say?"

Clyde said, "I reckon she'd understand."

"Yeah." The Doctor threw a lever. "I reckon she would." The engines began to hum. It was like music. Like coming home. "A quick trip around space and time," he said. "Let's see how the universe deals with Clyde Langer."

"Watch out, universe."

 

_end_


End file.
